In your second pair, consider the case of one supervisor talking to another about a float employee. He may be fine working in one situation, but not another. Is this too contrived a counter-example?
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kajacoSep 16 '10 at 16:36

No, it is not that it is too contrived, it is that you are talking about a different sense of "for me". The "for me" part doesn't mean "in my opinion" in this situation, it means "(when doing work) for me". But I agree that the sentence can mean something in the right situation (such as your example).
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KosmonautSep 16 '10 at 17:54

I basically agree with Antony Quinn's answer, with one slight difference. for me implies that your decision will not affect me. to me means I don't much care what you decide, even if it does affect me.

Illustration: My employer considers switching from issuing pay checks every week to issuing them once a quarter. This affects me, and I don't want it to happen, so I might say, It makes a difference for me (because my cash flow cannot handle this). (Sorry that I couldn't think of an example that kept the "no difference" idea.) However, if my employer considers switching from weekly to biweekly pay checks, it still affects me, but not in any way that matters to me (because my cash flow can handle this), so I might say, It makes no difference to me.

So in the biweekly paychecks example, one could say "the switch makes a difference for me (it affects me in some way) but it makes no difference to me (I'm not concerned about how it affects me)". Is that correct?
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Marcello RomaniJan 17 '14 at 0:52